


Pretend Girlfriend

by cdybedahl



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/pseuds/cdybedahl





	Pretend Girlfriend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clavicular](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clavicular/gifts).



Like so many things in Ann Perkins’ life, it starts with Leslie Knope doing something without thinking things through first. Or at all.  
“Ann!” Leslie says when Ann opens her door. “My fragrant ray of sunshine!”  
She’s too used to Leslie to question how a ray of sunshine can be fragrant. Instead she smiles at her friend. Who, unusually, is holding two bottles of wine, a box of chocolates, a small basket with various cheeses and a very large bouquet of flowers. It’s quite the balancing act.  
“Hi,” Ann says. “What’s up?”  
Leslie looks around the flowers.  
“Ann,” she says. “Ann, Ann, Ann.”  
“That’s my name,” Ann says. “You need a favor, don’t you?”  
“A teensy little one,” Leslie says. “Here, I brought chocolate!”  
She tries to give the box of chocolates to Ann, and nearly drops all she’s holding in the process. Ann grabs the wine bottles, on the theory that they’re the worst equipped to survive a fall.  
“Come in,” she says. “Tell me what you did this time.”  
She goes into the kitchen to get glasses and a corkscrew.  
“You know how I suggested that we hold a Pawnee Pride Party?” Leslie says from the living room.  
“Yes,” Ann says.  
It was suggested in that particular Leslie Knope way that left no room for argument or doubt. Ann wasn’t sure if Leslie herself knew that, or if she genuinely thought that she just offered suggestions.  
“And how that got picked up by a lot of gay and anti-gay groups on the Internet?”  
“Yes, that too.”  
“And how I was interviewed by some lesbian-interest news site? Over Skype?”  
That’s news to Ann. She hurries back into the living room, where Leslie has sat down on the couch. She puts the glasses down on the table and hands the cork screw to Leslie.  
“No,” she says. “That’s the first I hear about that.”  
“Oh,” Leslie says. “I was.”  
“Uh-huh,” Ann says. “How did it go?”  
“Great!” Leslie says. “It went great. Really great. Awesome!”  
Ann sits down.  
“What did you do?” she says.  
Leslie opens a wine bottle. She pours.  
“Here,” she says, handing Ann a glass. “Have some wine! It’s supposed to go well with the chocolate.”  
“Leslie,” Ann says. “What did you do?”  
“I… may have gotten a little carried away,” Leslie says.  
“And?”  
“And I may have said that I have a girlfriend.”  
“A girlfriend,” Ann says.  
“Yes,” Leslie says.  
“You’re married,” Ann says.  
“Yes,” Leslie says. “I did not mention that.”  
“So you said you have a girlfriend,” Ann said. “What then?”  
Leslie drank generously from her wine glass.  
“They got really interested,” she said. “And they’re sending one of their writers here. To write about me. And my girlfriend.”  
“I see,” Ann says. “So you need me to pretend to be this imaginary girlfriend.”  
It’s not a question.  
“Just for a little while,” Leslie says. “A teensy little while.”  
“An interview,” Ann says.  
That can’t take very long, she’s thinking. A few hours at most. For that long she can pretend to pretend to be in love with Leslie. Enough to fool the writer that she is, and Leslie that she’s not.  
“Well,” Leslie says. “A little more than an interview.”  
Ann frowns.  
“How much do they need to write an article?”  
“Well,” Leslie says. “It’s not so much an article. As a short biography.”  
Ann blinks.  
“Excuse me?” she says.  
“They got _really_ interested,” Leslie says. “So the writer is coming to stay here. For a month.”  
“A _month_!” Ann says. Well, yells.  
Leslie puts on her widest arch-politician smile and holds out the box of chocolate.  
“Have a sweet?” she says.  
“You’re going to pretend to be a lesbian for a _month_?” Ann says, ignoring the chocolate.  
“Well, bisexual,” Leslie says.  
“What about Ben?” Ann says. “You know, your _husband_?”  
Leslie shrugs.  
“I’ll talk to him. He’ll understand.”  
“You want us,” Ann says, “you and me, to pretend to be lovers for a month? Day and night?”  
Leslie nods.  
Ann sighs.  
They both know that Ann is going to agree. She can never turn Leslie down, for anything.  
“Do we live together?” she says.  
Leslie’s smile turns genuine.  
“Yes,” she said. “I’m thinking here in your house, because…”  
“Because it looks like a home rather than an extension of the Parks &Rec office,” Ann says. “All right. What about kids? Do we want those?”  
“Not now, but in a couple of years,” Leslie says. “I’ve got it all planned. The file is in my car, because I had my hands full on the way in.”  
Ann can’t help but smile. Having a written-up plan for a fake relationship is so very Leslie.  
“All right,” she says. “Give me the file and I’ll start reading up on our imaginary life. When do we start?”  
“The writer is coming here on Thursday,” Leslie says. “But I think we should start tomorrow, just to get used to it in advance. Iron out any unexpected problems.”  
Ann sips her wine and gets a piece of chocolate.  
“Are we married?” she says.  
Leslie shakes her head.  
“No,” she says. “Only living together. It’s not legal in Indiana, you know.”  
“We could have done it in Canada.”  
She sinks down into the couch, at the opposite end from Leslie. She pulls her legs up, holding the wine glass with both hands.  
“Well, we didn’t,” Leslie says. “We want to do it here in Pawnee, when the day comes.”  
“I like that,” Ann says.  
“I thought you would,” Leslie says.  
She’s turned almost sideways in the couch. She’s got one knee up on the seat and one arm stretched out along the back of the couch, almost as if she’s reaching for Ann.  
“What else?” Ann says.  
“Do you want to hear how we met?” Leslie says.  
“Sure,” Ann says.  
“It was a town meeting with Parks and Recreation,” Leslie said. “You stood up to complain about the big hole next to your yard. Your girlfriend Andie had fallen in and broken her leg.”  
“Sounds familiar,” Ann says.  
“It was love at first sight,” Leslie said. “Andie got really upset, broke up with you and moved to Unalakleet, Alaska, to help save the endangered _oogruk_. Since we’re both kind of not very good at this whole romance thing, it took months before we actually started dating.”  
“Fascinating,” Ann says. “What is an _oogruk_?”  
“It’s a kind of seal.”  
Ann leans her head against the backrest and lets her legs slide down into the floor.  
“Tell me more,” she says.

“So you’re, like, a lesbian now?” April says the next day in the Parks&Rec office.  
“No more than before,” Ann says.  
She’s reading the backstory Leslie’s written for them. Again. It’s extensive, and she want to memorize as much as possible before the journalist shows up.  
“So that’s a yes, then,” April says.  
Ann doesn’t bother answering.  
“Shouldn’t you, like, cut your hair really short and wear, like, flannel and Birkenstocks?”  
Ann looks up from the file on her imaginary life. April is sitting on her desk, legs crossed. She’s chewing on some sort of candy and looking at Ann.  
“Would you like that?” Ann says.  
April looks at her for a long while before she answers.  
“No,” April says.  
“Well then,” Ann says.  
She turns to a new page in the file, reads it. She can feel April watching her. It keeps her from concentrating. She should really go sit somewhere else, where she can read it peace.  
“Hey, Ann,” April says.  
“Yes?” Ann says, not looking up from her reading.  
“Do you want to have sex with me?”  
“No.”  
“Good, because you can’t.”  
Ann sighs.  
“What do you want, April?” she says.  
April looks away.  
“Nothing,” she says. “Just trying to make conversation. It’d be easier if you weren’t such a horrible bitch.”  
With an angrier motion than she’d like, Ann closes her file and goes somewhere else to read.

“Wait, so Leslie’s a dyke now?” Tom says.  
Ann is sitting at the bar in the Snake Hole. Tom is leaning over it from the bartender side, abusing his owner status and generally being in the way.  
“I’m pretty sure that’s not the word she’d chose,” Ann says.  
“But it’s true?” he says. “She and you, doing the wild thang?”  
He says the last couple of words in a ridiculous sing-song voice. Leslie and Ann hasn’t had sex. Ann doesn’t know if they will. They have kissed. For practice, according to Leslie. So it’ll look natural when they meet the journalist. So far, Ann hasn’t dared suggest that they “practice” anything more.  
“Yup, sure is,” she says.  
“Daymn!” Tom says. “I would not have guessed that. Although I guess she always paid you unusually much attention.”  
Ann empties her shot glass and waves for a refill. Since she’s talking to an owner, it comes fast.  
“Wait,” she says. “Why are you only asking about Leslie? Why aren’t you asking if I’m a dyke now?”  
That’s not the word she’d use either. That it slips out anyway tells her she’s getting tipsy and that she should stop drinking. Instead, she empties the shot glass in one gulp. The bartender refills without prompting.  
“Nah,” Tom says. “You were always obvious.”  
“Excuse me?!” Ann says. “Obvious how?”  
“Oh please,” he says. “You’ve been drooling after Leslie since you first saw her. Also, there’s Andy.”  
“I’ve dated lots of guys!” Ann protests. “I’ve dated _you_.”  
“Yeeeaah,” Tom says. “Tell me, how many of the guys you dated only once or twice did you sleep with?”  
Ann looks away.  
“A few,” she says.  
Tom raises his eyebrows.  
“Ok, fine, none,” Ann says. “But you and I did!”  
“Yes, we did,” Tom admits. “And I may not be the most romantic guy in the world, but I _can_ tell when a woman is not really into it. Seriously, if it hadn’t been so obvious that you weren’t really interested I’d have been after you for sex morning, lunch and twice in the evenings. Maybe more. You’re _totally_ hot.”  
Ann just blinks at him, at a loss for words.  
“Tell me,” Tom says, “roughly how often did you have sex with Andy and Chris?”  
Almost never.  
“It… happened,” she says.  
Tom gives her a knowing look.  
“Chris is so closeted that when I changed the sign on his office mail slot to ‘Narnia’, his mail still got delivered right,” Tom says. “Andy I don’t get, but once he started seeing April it was obvious sex with women was not a priority of his.”  
“Wait,” Ann says. “Under her horrible attitude, April is really hot. Why would being with her mean he’s not interested in women?”  
“She went from a gay boyfriend to Andy,” he says, “and she instantly hates every attractive woman who comes near her.”  
Ann thinks about that.  
“So why didn’t you change _her_ mail slot to ‘Narnia’?” she says.  
“Basic sense of self-preservation,” Tom says.

When they’re standing in the airport waiting for the journalist to arrive, Ann slips her hand into Leslie’s. Leslie looks down at their joined hands for a moment, then squeezes hers a little.  
“Good idea,” she says. “Makes it look real.”  
Ann’s heart dies a little. Again.  
“Yeah,” she lies. “That’s the idea.”  
“Do you think we should practice kissing more?” Leslie says.  
“Probably not right here in the airport,” Ann says.  
“You’re right,” Leslie says. “I should always listen to you.”  
“Let’s go home and have sex,” Ann says, totally on impulse.  
Leslie gives her a long questioning look.  
“That’s…,” she says, then stops.  
“Do you…,” she tries next.  
“Are you…,” come after that, and by then Ann is starting to panic.  
“Never mind,” Ann says. “I wasn’t serious.”  
Leslie abruptly looks away.  
“Oh,” she says.  
“Although, I mean,” Ann says, “that is what we’d do if we really were lovers, right? You would want to sleep with me?”  
When the question is out Ann realizes exactly how badly she wants to make love to Leslie. She’s known for a long time that she’s in love with the unstoppable blonde, but it’s not really until just now, after her conversation with Tom, standing in a public place holding her hand, that Ann truly gets just how intensely she wants Leslie.  
“Yes,” Leslie says without hesitation. “Yes, I sure would want to do that. A lot.”  
Ann looks at Leslie, who’s looking away. That answer was rather more enthusiastic than she had expected. She’s just about to ask Leslie about it when Leslie points at someone.  
“There!” she says.  
She sets off across the room, pulling Ann with her. She hurries up to a dark-haired young woman. She’s wearing a black t-shirt with “YES GAY” written on it in large white letters. There’s a backpack in her hand, and she’s looking at Leslie with some alarm.  
“Welcome to Pawnee!” Leslie says. “You’re Chloe, aren’t you? I’m Leslie Knope, and this is my lovely girlfriend Ann Perkins!”  
A tiny shiver goes through Ann when Leslie calls her her girlfriend, false as it is.  
“Uh, hi,” the young woman says. “Yeah, I’m Chloe. Pleased to meet you.”  
“Hi,” Ann says.  
They shake hands.  
“I didn’t expect you to meet me here,” Chloe says.  
“Oh, I just wanted to make sure you made it here OK,” Leslie says. “Let us give you a ride to the hotel, and then we meet up and start working tomorrow, OK?”  
“Sure,” Chloe says. “Although I was thinking working would just be you guys doing whatever you’d normally do, and me hanging around watching and asking questions.”  
Leslie’s smile freezes for a moment, like it does when something happens that she wasn’t prepared for.  
“Sure!” she says. “We can do that.”  
“Great,” Chloe says. “Right now all I want to do is get something to eat and collapse in bed.”  
Leslie checks her watch.  
“But it’s only five o’clock,” she says.  
“I flew here from Los Angeles,” Chloe says.  
Ann frowns.  
“Isn’t it two o’clock there?” she says.  
“Yeah,” Chloe says. “I don’t really live by office hours.”  
They set off for the hotel. Leslie drives, and Ann sits next to her. When they enter the car, Ann steals a brief kiss. While they’re driving, she keeps a hand on Leslie’s thigh. Leslie lets her.

The next couple of days are weird. Chloe the journalist hovers around wherever Leslie goes, apparently doing nothing but looking, listening and taking the occasional picture. Every now and then she asks a few questions of Leslie, or drags someone else off to the side for a more in-depth interview. Her interview with April lasts for several hours, and after it April is a lot less hostile towards the journalist.  
The bit that Ann has a hard time dealing with is that Chloe goes _wherever_ Leslie goes. She’s like a shadow, always nearby, sometimes noticeable but mostly not. She’s just… there. All the time. After a couple of days, Ann catches herself sneaking around at home, stealing looks out the window to see if the journalist is hiding in the bushes. Leslie tells her she’s being paranoid.  
The other bit Ann has a hard time dealing with is Leslie living with her. She didn’t think it’d be a problem, given how much they hang out together anyway, and it’s not a problem, exactly, but it’s not easy either.  
“Are you coming to bed soon?” Ann asks late on an evening a couple of days after Chloe arrived.  
“Sure, soon,” Leslie says.  
She’s on the couch, reading reports and taking notes. Which sounds normal enough. Only when Leslie does it, she turns the pages of the reports with her left hand and writes notes with her right, without even looking at what she’s writing. She’s like a machine, the reports passing through her. A scary amount of what she reads she remembers, too. And she does this every night.  
It’s a very Leslie Knope thing to do. It’s exactly the sort of thing that made Ann fall in love with her. The intensity, the relentlessness, the crazy intense passion Leslie brings to absolutely everything she does. Nobody but Leslie Knope, nobody in the whole world, would write a four-hundred-page fake background for a relationship that never existed, just in order to fool a journalist.  
Ann sits down next to Leslie, puts her head on Leslie’s shoulder.  
“Please?” she says. “The bed feels empty without you.”  
The first night of their fake living together was tense and awkward. Neither of them knew how to move, what to do, what not to do, how to sit, how to lie down so that they wouldn’t overstep some boundary they couldn’t see. In the end, tired of trying to sleep without accidentally touching Leslie while wanting like crazy to touch her all over, Ann simply turned around and put her arms around Leslie.  
“We’re supposed to be lovers, right?” she said. “So let’s at least not be afraid of touching.”  
She’d felt Leslie relax against her, and a moment later her embrace was reciprocated.  
“Let’s not,” Leslie had whispered in her ear.  
Getting used to having Leslie in her bed went scary fast, and now it feels like something’s missing if she goes to bed alone.  
“I’ll be done soon,” Leslie says.  
“You always say that,” Ann says. “And it always takes hours before you really are.”  
Leslie leans back. Her arm goes around Ann’s shoulders.  
“Maybe the reports can wait until tomorrow,” she says.  
“Good,” Ann says.  
She gets up, half-drags Leslie into the bedroom and makes sure she really gets into her pyjamas and into bed. When they’re finally in bed together, when she has Leslie’s warm body spooned in front of her, Ann can at last relax. And in the final moment before she drifts off to sleep, when she’s already too far gone into dreamland to respond, she hears Leslie’s voice.  
“I’ll miss this part the most,” Leslie whispers.

“I envy you, you know,” Chloe says.  
She and Ann are sitting out in the Town Hall yard, eating sandwiches for lunch. Leslie is supposed to be there too, but as usual she got held up somewhere. Ann intends to force her to eat something later.  
“Envy me how?” Ann says.  
“You and Leslie so obviously adore each other,” Chloe says. “I wish I had a relationship like that.”  
Ann has no idea how to respond to that, given that she and Leslie actually has no relationship at all. Well, except friends.  
“You think so?” she says after she’s taken another bite of her sandwich.  
“Please,” Chloe says. “I know so. Here, let me show you.”  
She digs out the large expensive-looking digital camera she carries around. She fiddles with it for a while, looking at the display on its back.  
“Here,” she says, holding the camera out to Ann, back first.  
The display on the back is showing a picture. A picture of Leslie and herself. They’re sitting at the exact same table where Chloe and Ann are sitting now, with half-eaten lunches on the table in front of them. They’re looking at each other with an intensity and a focus that’s uncomfortable to look at. One feels like an intruder even seeing it. Seeing the unknowing smiles, the way they’re turned to each other, they way the two of them obviously are not aware of anything in the whole world except each other. How they seem not to need anything in the world except each other.  
Ann gets a lump in her throat. She’s suddenly overwhelmed by the desire for that picture to be true, for Leslie to _actually_ look at her like that, not it being just an accident of photography, a split second in transition from one truth to another having been caught on a display and frozen into illusory truth.

It’s late Friday afternoon on the second week of Chloe’s visit to Pawnee. Ann is alone at home, having left work early, when the doorbell rings. When she opens, she sees Ron Swanson.  
“Ron?” she says. “What brings you here?”  
“This has to end,” he says.  
Ann frowns and takes a step back.  
“What has to end?” she says.  
“This thing with you and Knope,” he says. “It’s intolerable.”  
“Excuse me?!” Ann says.  
She’s genuinely shocked. She’s very aware that she and Ron shares precious few opinions on, well, _anything_ , but the one thing she thought she knew about him was that he was passionately on the side of personal freedom. That he would object to what she and Leslie did — or, in truth, did not — in the privacy of their own bedroom was a shocking surprise.  
“Do you know what has happened since the two of you started… doing whatever it is you’re doing?” he says.  
“Nothing in particular?” Ann says. “Certainly nothing anyone else should care about.”  
“WRONG!” Ron says. “You’re _happy_!”  
Ann just stares at him for a long moment.  
“What?” she finally says, because what he just said makes no sense whatsoever.  
“You used to hang around the office, moping after Leslie and getting in the way,” he says. “You’d tie up hours and hours of the minions’ time, knowingly or not. And Leslie would spend a ridiculous amount of energy and time trying to come up with schemes and suggestions where she could involve you, so she’d have a reason to be close to you.”  
He stops to draw breath.  
“You both _used_ to do that,” he continues. “But no longer. Now you live with her, so you don’t have to stalk the office like a lost puppy. Leslie knows you’ll be here when she comes home, so she doesn’t need to twist everything Parks &Rec does in order to include you. And do you know what the consequence of that is?”  
Ann shakes her head, dumbstruck.  
“ _THINGS ARE EFFICIENT!_ ” Ron roars. “The minions _work_! Leslie’s plans _make sense_! Suddenly Parks &Rec is a smooth-functioning government machine! We’ve gotten more done in the last week than in the previous _year_!”  
He stops breath again.  
“And, by God,” he says, “I won’t have that!”  
He glares at Ann, and she stares back, stunned. Then, slowly, laughter starts bubbling up inside her. She tries to stop it, but she can’t. It slips out of her, first as a couple of weird gulps, then a handfull of giggles and finally it explodes out in a full-on screaming laughter that has her having to hold on to the wall in order to not fall over. She laughs until tears are running down her face, until the muscles in her belly hurts, until she can’t breathe any more. She ends up leaning against the wall, trying to catch some air without breaking out into laughter again. The occasional giggle still slips out anyway.  
“I’m sorry,” she gasps.  
“Well,” Ron says. “I’m glad someone’s amused.”  
“Don’t worry,” she says. “If you just have patience for a couple of more weeks, I’m sure everything will return to what it used to be.”  
“Oh,” he says. “Good.”  
As he turns to leave, Ann realizes that what she just said is nothing but the plain honest truth.  
Inside her, the laughter turns to ashes.

Ann starts treasuring every moment she gets to spend with Leslie as her girlfriend, fake as it may be, in a whole new way after Ron’s visit. She turns down things so she can stay home in the evenings. Not that they do anything in particular, no, Leslie as usual spends a lot of time reading reports and writing plans.  
Although, perhaps, sometimes, Ann lets herself believe that Leslie does it a bit less than usual. That at least a little more time goes to the two of them. Talking, drinking tea, even taking walks. And sometimes it’s Leslie that reaches for Ann’s hand rather than the other way around.  
At night, Ann keeps her arms around Leslie as if the blonde woman would be taken away by the winds if she let go. She tries not to overdo it, to not let her wishful thinking show through, but she knows she doesn’t always succeed. Sometimes, she holds on to hard. Sometimes, she buries her face in Leslie’s neck and breathes in.  
Once, she dreams that she wakes up and Leslie has never been there at all. She wakes up for real crying miserably, whispering “don’t go don’t go don’t go” over and over again.  
Leslie holds her and strokes her hair.

By the middle of the final week Ann is back to moping around the Parks&Rec office like a lost puppy. Leslie is back to making convoluted plans that just has to include Ann. Now that Ron has mentioned it, she can’t not see it. She’s sitting at the desk that’s theoretically not hers, since she doesn’t work there, and looking through the glass wall of Leslie’s office. Leslie is in there with Tom. They’re looking at papers stuck to Leslie’s whiteboard and talking agitatedly.  
“Right, this has gone on long enough,” Donna suddenly says.  
Ann hears her say it, but pays it no attention until she feels a hand grab her collar and none to gently pull her up from her chair and out of the office.  
“Donna!” she says. “What are you doing?!”  
“I’m gonna talk some sense into you, girl,” Donna says. “Or, if that fails, beat it into you.”  
Donna drags them into an empty conference room and closes the door.  
“You’re not really going to beat me, are you?” Ann says.  
She’s suddenly very aware that Donna is quite a bit bigger than she is.  
“That depends,” Donna says. “Are you going to listen to what I say?”  
Ann nods enthusiastically.  
“You’re crazy in love with Leslie, you know that, right?” Donna says.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ann says out of habit.  
“Girl,” Donna says. “Seriously. You’re not that stupid.”  
Ann sags a little.  
“No,” she says. “I kind of wish I was.”  
“So go tell her!”  
Ann can hear the misery in her own voice when she speaks.  
“She doesn’t love me that way,” she says.  
“OK, I take back what I just said,” Donna says. “You obviously are that stupid.”  
“What?” Ann says. “She doesn’t! She’s got Ben!”  
“Really,” Donna says. “How often has she been calling him the past couple of weeks?”  
Ann blinks.  
“Calling him?” she says.  
“Yeah, calling him,” Donna says. “Like you do with people you miss and want to be around but can’t.”  
The answer is _never_. Not once in over three weeks has Leslie called her husband. _He_ called _her_ a few times the first week, but after that he seemed to give up. Slowly, it dawns on Ann that this may not exactly be expected behavior.  
“She hasn’t,” Ann says.  
“Mmm-mmm,” Donna says. “And how many times has she called you, to say she’s running late or ask what takeout you want for dinner or some dumb shit like that?”  
“Every day,” Ann says. “Every day without fail.”  
“Ann?” Donna says.  
Ann looks up, meets her eyes.  
“ _Seriously_ ,” Donna says. “You’re not that dumb. Really.”  
“I’m feeling pretty dumb right now,” Ann says.  
“Good,” Donna says. “That means you’re learning.”  
“I guess,” Ann says. “Maybe.”  
“So are you going to do something about it?”  
She’d like to. Very much.  
“I don’t know what,” she says.  
Donna shrugs.  
“If I want a guy, I tell him to ask me out,” she says. “I don’t know what you white girls do when you fancy each other. But given how the two of you have been trying real hard not to see what’s happening, I’m guessing you’ll have to be pretty damn obvious.”  
“Obvious,” Ann says.  
She thinks about it for a moment. Doing something is scary. It can go wrong. It can be painful. But when she thinks about it, she can’t deny that _not_ doing something is certain to be really painful for a very long time.  
“I can do that,” she says.  
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Donna says. “But good luck, girl.”

Ann walks into Leslie’s office without knocking. Leslie and Tom, still working at the whiteboard, turn their heads and look at her. Ann looks Tom in the eyes.  
“Out,” she says, gesturing at the door with her thumb.  
Tom looks from her to Leslie and back to her, then obviously comes to a decision. He slithers out of the room, staying as far from Ann as possible on his way out.  
“Ann?” Leslie says once the door has closed behind Tom. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”  
“Yes,” Ann says.  
Before Leslie can say anything, Ann pushes her up against the whiteboard and kisses her. Not carefully and tentatively as in their so-called practice sessions, but intensely, passionately, full of need. She pushes her whole body against Leslie’s, wanting to feel all of her at once.  
At first, there is hesitation from Leslie. But it only lasts for a fraction of a second before her arms are around Ann’s neck, pulling her closer and even harder into the kiss. Ann buries her fingers in Leslie’s hair.  
When she feels Leslie’s thigh start pushing its way in between her legs, Ann breaks the kiss.  
“Leslie?” she says.  
“Yes?” Leslie says.  
“I don’t want this to end when she leaves,” Ann says.  
“You mean Chloe,” Leslie says.  
Ann nods. She feels Leslie, still pressed between Ann and the whiteboard, relax.  
“Oh, thank God,” Leslie breathes.  
Her hand has found its way to one of Ann’s breasts. Ann glances to the side. On the other side of the glass wall, Tom, Donna, Jerry, April, Ron and Chloe are watching them.  
“Um, Leslie?” Ann says.  
“Shut up and take my clothes off,” Leslie says in between kissing Ann’s neck.  
“Leslie!” Ann says.  
Leslie stops kissing and looks at her.  
“What?” she says.  
“We have an audience.”  
Leslie follows Ann’s gaze. April and Tom are grinning at them. Donna is nodding approvingly. Chloe is taking pictures.  
“Oh,” Leslie says.  
“Take the rest of the day off,” Ann says. “Come home with me. Spend the rest of the day in bed.”  
She can feel Leslie hesitate. For once, she doesn’t think it’s Leslie having seconds thoughts or rejecting her. No, she knows perfectly well that the problem is the thought of taking a half day off. The very concept is anathema to Leslie Knope.  
“You can write it up as research for the Pawnee Pride Party,” Ann says.  
Leslie’s face lights up.  
“Yes!” she says. “Yes, I can!”  
So fast that Ann doesn’t really have time to catch what happens, she’s being dragged by the hand through the office.  
“Important research!” she hears Leslie shout. “For the Pride thing! I’ll be back tomorrow!”  
In the distance while they make their way down the stairs, Ann hears Ron shout behind them.  
“Take all the time you want!”

“I’m not sure I really understand what happened here,” Chloe says.  
They’re at the airport again. To see her off, this time. Ann and Leslie are holding hands this time too, only this time they also keep turning to look at each other and smiling.  
“We had some things to work out,” Leslie says.  
“Looks like you did,” Chloe says.  
“Yes,” Ann says. “We really did.”  
She still can’t believe it. A part of her expects her to wake up at any moment. That she, Ann Perkins, is not only together with another woman, but with _Leslie Knope_ , is too weird to be real. Except it is real.  
She hopes she doesn’t look quite as giddy as she feels.  
“I’m happy for you,” Chloe said.  
“Thank you,” Leslie says. “I hope you got what you came here for.”  
Chloe nods.  
“Pretty much,” she says. “Although I think I’ll be wanting to come back in a few months’ time.”  
“You’re always welcome,” Leslie says. “Have a nice trip home!”  
They shake hands, and Chloe heads for her plane. Ann and Leslie look at her walk away.  
“There’s no way we actually fooled her,” Ann says.  
“Probably not,” Leslie says. “But, hey, it’s true now!”  
Ann smiles.  
“That it is,” she says.  
“What do we do now?” she asks after a moment.  
“I get a divorce,” Leslie says. “We fix the law so we can get married. We fix all of the other women-hostile laws. I run for president. You become First Lady. At some point I’d like to adopt, but we can discuss that later.”  
“I was thinking more like do we have dinner before or after we make love,” Ann says.  
“Oh,” Leslie says. “Well, on one hand I want to get you into bed as soon as possible, but on the other, once I have you there I won’t want to get up for a long time.”  
“Me too,” Ann says. “It’s a dilemma.”  
“I have a suggestion,” Leslie says.  
“Oh?” Ann says. “What is it?”  
“Quickie in the back seat, get takeout on the way home, eat it in bed.”  
If there’s one thing that’s surprised her about getting together with Leslie, it’s how eager and enthusiastic a lover she is. If there are two things that’s surprised her, the second one is how strong her own libido is when she has someone she really desires.  
She lets go of Leslie’s hand and places her own on Leslie’s ass instead.  
“Sounds like a plan,” she says.  
Leslie’s arm wraps around Ann’s waist. Together, they head for their car.

  



End file.
